British Broadband Stubbornness Costs Us £322 A Year

There are many upsides to bring a stubborn Brit: getting a seat on the bus, feeling like you bested someone in a battle of wits, never having to change. But it seems being stuck in our ways is costing us, at least in terms of bills.

Ofcom-accredited comparison site Cable.co.uk have worked out that the average saving for switching broadband providers is an impressive £322 a year, but most of us just can't be arsed. After speaking to 2,000 UK 'heads of household' (that'll be the cat then), the service found that while almost three-quarters (74%) of us said we'd ditch our beloved supplier in a heartbeat if someone gave us the cash now, saving the same amount over a year just wasn't appealing enough to make us bother. Half of the respondents said they hadn't shopped around for broadband at all in the last 5 years, 35% had only changed providers once in that time, and 42% had never changed their supplier. Is AOL dial-up even still available...?

Dan Howdle, Cable.co.uk's consumer telecoms expert, comments "Like switching energy provider, switching your broadband deal at the end of your contract is clearly perceived as a hassle. How else could it be that most of us don’t bother, even though we’re losing considerable sums of money as a result?

"Thanks to recent changes in the rules courtesy of Ofcom, switching broadband deal is not only incredibly quick and easy, it’s also seamless and painless. The whole process now takes less than fifteen minutes either online or on the phone. Fifteen minutes to save £322 per year on average? For most of us that would constitute the highest-earning quarter of an hour of our entire lives."

There you have it, folks: switch broadband providers four times an hour and you'll be minted. Or something.